When two-and- a-half-year-old Bailey Minotti asks why his dad can’t come with him to his favourite park, his mother, Cait, doesn’t know how to respond.
Cait said parks are meant to be a “family thing” but not all playgrounds in Wyndham are inclusive of the different abilities community members can have.
“He just keeps asking me, ‘When can daddy come …I wanna show daddy,’ and I’m like ‘You can’t,” she said. ’
“But [to] try explaining to him why daddy can’t come, it’s not an easy thing.
“He sees other kids and he says ‘But their daddy can come’ and it just shouldn’t be this way, he has a point, if their daddy can come to the park, why can’t his?”
President’s Park in Wyndham Vale is Bailey’s “absolute favourite” according to Cait, but with her husband Stuart in a wheelchair and a baby in a pram, the Tarneit resident believes council should construct paths that lead to the equipment to make the area more accessible.
“A path that leads you to the fence, and then you can look over a fence, doesn’t make a park wheelchair accessible,” she said.
“He needs to be able to get up close, to be able to play and interact with his son, and he can’t, cause there’s tan bark everywhere.
“They don’t see it from a wheelchair user’s perspective, and actually see that that is pointless.”
A spokesperson from Wyndham council said the council was currently in the early stages of delivering the short-term priorities of the Presidents Park Master Plan.
“The Presidents Park Master Plan recommends the future redevelopment of the play area at Presidents Parks to a Regional All Abilities Play Space,” the spokesperson said.
“Access for all will be front of mind in the future design of the space and community consultation will be undertaken to inform and guide the project.
“The key elements identified as short-term priorities include pathway connections, car parking improvements, community event space improvements and the Regional All Abilities play space.”
Cait acknowledges that there are some accessible parks in the community, but says they’re “not as common as they should be”.
“In today’s society, it shouldn’t be an afterthought, we shouldn’t be having to campaign for this, it should just be a natural thing that we’re making parks more accessible to everybody,” she said.
“We should be able to just go to any playground, just like anybody else really, we shouldn’t have to go and check it out first and make sure daddy can come.”
Details: www.wyndham.vic.gov.au/project/presidents-park-master-plan
